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Baseball postseason, for all of its unpredictability, has brought us the meeting of the two best teams in the sport to determine the National League representative in the World Series. Ahead of last season’s NLCS, the angle of David versus Goliath was heavily played in virtually any analysis—it didn’t help the more centered angle that the Dodgers steamrolled the Brewers on their way to a sweep. This time around it might not be that simple.

The similarities are evident, with the Brewers, yet again, having home-field advantage as a team that better maximized its skill set in the regular season, all while the Dodgers remain the favorites to advance, as was the case last season. Having said that, foolish are those who project a similar imbalance to that of the previous NLCS—the expectation of a more tightly contested series goes through pitching.

It may appear like a small factor, but the fact that both teams won their Division Series in four games means that Pat Murphy and Dave Roberts can line up their pitching in the ideal way for this Championship Series. And pitching is the great equalizer here, as both teams are stacked in that department and neither offense is currently hot enough to the point of putting into question the likelihood of a series dominated by elite pitching.

For all the talent on the mound for the Dodgers, the odds-on favorite to win the NL Cy Young pitches on the other side in Jacob Misiorowski. He is joined by the rookie Logan Henderson at the front end of a pitching staff tied with the Dodgers for the second-highest ERA+ in baseball. Last year’s Brewers ace, Freddy Peralta, was good, not great, in the series against Los Angeles, and that applied to several key Brewers pitchers in order for the Dodgers to sweep the series in four without major offensive explosions.

With starting pitching on both sides able to dominate, the Dodgers have an advantage from last season’s team in that the bullpen brings a much greater sense of reliability, not only in depth but also in the backend. We probably get the sense most fans will watch Edwin Díaz and Tanner Scott, waiting for them to fail all the way until the hypothetical final out of the World Series—but they’ve done enough to earn Dave Roberts’ trust, and the plethora of options behind them ready for a high-leverage spot if things go south isn’t to be ignored.

Such emphasis on pitching is a must from the Brewers side because offensively, despite Jake Bauers’ breakout campaign at first, the Dodgers still retain a heavy advantage, one that might even be currently underplayed ahead of the series. With little to no action from some of its top hitters, the Dodgers weren’t brilliant, but they still got theirs in key spots against the feisty Braves. Last postseason, the Dodgers offense wasn’t bombastic against Milwaukee, but it did enough to capitalize on strong pitching, while the Brewers’ attack was nowhere to be found against elite Dodger starting pitching.

Second to last in regular-season homers and top five in stolen bases, the Brewers’ offense’s best course of action to put a dent in Dodger pitching is through generating action on the basepaths — putting the bat on the ball and pressuring a defense that has vulnerabilities (I won’t name any names — Teoscar Hernández, cough, cough). It’s nearly unfathomable to imagine Blake Snell or Tyler Glasnow escaping a five-walk outing with just one run against the Brewers like they did facing the Braves.

All season long, the National League has clearly proven to be the superior league. It’s only fitting that the winner of the NLCS, whoever that is, will enter the Fall Classic as the favorite to win it all — the Dodgers in pursuit of a threepeat and the Brewers in search of their first title.

The Colorado Rockies didn’t give us much to celebrate in 2026, and with October baseball happening elsewhere, I’ve been relegated to staring at Rockies players’ Baseball Savant pages and rewatching old game footage.

Since I’ve already spent an unreasonable amount of time doing exactly that, I figured we might as well hand out a few awards.

Statcast measures just about everything imaginable on a baseball field, from bat speed and exit velocity to sprint speed and pitch velocity. Those numbers don’t always tell the whole story, but they can reveal things about players that traditional statistics might miss.

These aren’t MVPs, Silver Sluggers, or Gold Gloves. Think less Cooperstown, more Dundies.

We’re simply recognizing some of the more interesting things Rockies players did in 2026. Only performances in a Colorado uniform count, with a minimum of 100 competitive swings for average bat speed and 100 tracked batted balls for average exit velocity. Take the measurements for what you will.

Without further ceremony to stand on, let’s dive in.

Batting

Fastest Bat: Sterlin Thompson (75.4 mph)

Thompson averaged 75.4 mph across 119 competitive swings in his brief major-league stint, narrowly beating Hunter Goodman (75.0) and Mickey Moniak (74.3). With MLB hitters averaging roughly 72 mph, Thompson brought some serious bat speed to the plate.

Highest Average Exit Velocity: Edouard Julien (90.8 mph)

Julien averaged 90.8 mph on 165 tracked batted balls, edging Goodman (89.8), Troy Johnston (89.7), and Moniak (89.7). That’s above the MLB average of roughly 89 mph, although the quality of his contact rarely translated into playable MLB production.

Hardest-Hit Ball: Hunter Goodman (116.2 mph)

On June 26 against Minnesota, Goodman crushed a two-run homer that traveled 451 feet. At 116.2 mph off the bat, it was the hardest-hit ball by a Rockie all season, reaching a level of exit velocity rarely seen even across MLB.

Six days earlier, Thompson had recorded an infield single with an exit velocity of just 32.6 mph, the softest non-bunt hit in our Statcast data.

That’s an 83.6-mph difference. One ball left the yard. The other barely left the infield.

Both counted as hits.

Lowest Chase Rate: Edouard Julien (18.6%)

Julien collects his second award after swinging at just 18.6% of pitches outside the strike zone, well below the MLB norm of roughly 28–30%.

Adael Amador (24.7%) and Kyle Karros (24.8%) also showed impressive restraint.

For all that discipline, Julien’s offensive results were very poor. He demonstrated an ability to avoid chasing bad pitches, but that alone wasn’t enough to make him a productive hitter.

Pitching

Fastest Pitch: Seth Halvorsen (101.9 mph)

On May 17 against Arizona, Halvorsen grabbed a strike against Geraldo Perdomo with a 100.7-mph fastball before upping the ante with a blistering 101.9-mph heater, the fastest pitch thrown by a Rockie all season.

Unfortunately for Halvorsen, Perdomo ripped it for a double.

Fastest Average Four-Seamer: Chase Dollander(98.9 mph)

Dollander averaged 98.9 mph across 280 four-seam fastballs, the highest mark among Rockies pitchers.

With the typical MLB four-seamer sitting around 94–95 mph, that’s serious velocity over a substantial number of pitches, not just one particularly hard throw.

How much of that velocity Dollander retains will be worth watching as he works toward a return from injury sometime in 2027.

Fielding

Strongest Arm: Cole Carrigg(96.9 mph)

Carrigg averaged 96.9 mph on his qualifying throws, ahead of Brenton Doyle (93.1) and Tyler Freeman (90.9). That’s exceptional arm strength even by major-league outfield standards, and nearly four mph harder than Doyle, who is known for a powerful arm.

His arm was capable of producing throws exceeding 100 mph, although getting the ball to its intended destination was another matter. On September 10 against the Yankees, Carrigg unleashed a throw that sailed over home plate.

But when he kept it on target, the results could be spectacular. On June 17 against the Cubs, Carrigg delivered a 99.8-mph throw to third base to complete a double play.

Two throws, two very different outcomes. The arm strength was never in question.

Most Outs Above Average: Ryan Ritter,TJ Rumfieldand Chad Stevens(+2 OAA)

Our first three-way tie!

All three finished with two Outs Above Average, a Statcast measurement of how many additional outs a defender converts compared with expectations.

Doyle or Ezequiel Tovar might have been the names you’d expect atop this category, but neither finished with the team lead. OAA is a cumulative measurement influenced by opportunities, and while +2 isn’t exactly Gold Glove territory, it’s only one part of the defensive picture.

Rumfield showed off his reactions on July 18 against Cincinnati, diving to stop a 100.8-mph grounder from Edwin Arroyo before recovering to record the out at first.

Stevens demonstrated a different kind of defensive ability on June 2 against the Angels, ranging into shallow center field to make a reaching catch on a fly ball from Sebastián Rivero.

The Rockies’ defense was poor overall in 2026, but there were still individual contributors and moments worth appreciating.

Running

Fastest Runner: Jake McCarthy (30.0 ft/sec)

McCarthy averaged 30.0 feet per second, putting him in the 98th percentile across MLB and reaching Statcast’s threshold for elite sprint speed.

Carrigg followed at 28.7, with Braxton Fulford third at 28.6.

Fulford didn’t see much playing time, but his speed was undeniable, especially for a catcher. In fact, he was the fastest catcher in baseball by this metric.

McCarthy also led Colorado with seven runs of baserunning value, including five from taking extra bases and two from basestealing.

And if you want to see what that kind of speed looks like, consider his July 12 trip around the bases against San Francisco. McCarthy drove a ball into the spacious right-center-field gap at Oracle Park and never stopped running.

It was McCarthy’s second leadoff inside-the-park home run of the season, the first coming against Paul Skenes on June 20. He became the first player to accomplish the feat twice in one year since Edd Roush in 1929.

What it all means

Absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. These numbers won’t change the Rockies’ record or tell us much about what 2027 might hold.

But they do offer a few reminders that even in a season we’d rather forget, there were individual performances worth appreciating.

Congratulations to our winners!

Your trophies are imaginary, but the numbers are real.

Please keep in mind our Purple Row Community Guidelines when you’re commenting. Thanks! 

A generation of Yankees fans have been spoiled. First, it was Mariano Rivera — when “Enter Sandman” began to echo through the halls of Yankee Stadium, the game was effectively over. David Robertson “the Houdini” and Andrew Miller “the Game Enderer” locked down the ninth inning so effectively in their one-year stints as the closer that nobody really noticed a difference. Aroldis Chapman exasperated fans, for, well, a lot of reasons, but he’s got a Hall of Fame resume for a reason, and there’s a non-zero chance he ends up there with a Yankee cap. Clay Holmes spent the better part of three seasons as the Yankee closer, making two All-Star appearances, and in his brief stint in the job in 2024, Luke Weaver was a big reason they made the World Series.

In truth, only one closer in the last 30 years has been an unmitigated disaster, and his performance prompted the Yankees to make a swing for his replacement — today’s birthday boy, David Bednar.

David Jeffrey Bednar
Born: October 10, 1994 (Pittsburgh, PA)
Yankees Tenure: 2025-present

Born in Pittsburgh and raised in the extremely small town of Mars (the Pennsylvania borough, a part of the greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area, has fewer than 1,500 inhabitants), Bednar played baseball for his local high school but — perhaps unsurprisingly, given the size of the school — went undrafted. From there, he went to Lafayette College in Easton, PA, and was en route to Massachusetts after his junior year to play in the Cape Cod Summer League. He never made it there, however, as the San Diego Padres instead made him the 1,044th pick of the 2016 MLB Draft — a pick that, since Rob Manfred shrunk the draft to 20 rounds, no longer exists.

According to the school newspaper, he was just the fourth player ever drafted out of Lafayette, and when he made his MLB debut as a 40-man roster call-up in 2019, he became just the second Lafayette alumnus to make The Show. Between that month and the abbreviated 2020 campaign, Bednar struggled in limited time with the Padres, allowing 13 runs in 17.1 innings across the two years. As such, the Padres had no problem including him as part of the seven-player deal that brought Joe Musgrove to Southern California.

Now with his hometown Pirates, Bednar spent the entire 2021 season in the Majors, and he established himself as one of the league’s most reliable relievers. He posted a 2.23 ERA in 61 games, striking out 77 en route to a down-ballot Rookie of the Year vote. He then took over the closer’s job on a permanent basis the following year, compiling 58 saves and a pair of All-Star nods across the 2022 and 2023 campaigns.

An awful start to 2024, however — he allowed 14 runs in 10 innings in April — prompted the Pirates to remove him from the closer’s role after a disastrous August (10.97 ERA), and when he struggled out of the gate in 2025, they wasted no time and optioned him to Triple-A in the first week of the season.

When he returned to the Majors in late April, though, Bednar recaptured his All-Star self. From April 19th through July 28th, he allowed just seven runs and struck out 50 batters in 37 innings. It was on the back of this dominant performance that the Yankees, eager to rebuild their bullpen, made Bednar a priority at the trade deadline, sending a package centered on catcher Rafael Flores to the Pirates to bring “Renegade” to the Bronx.

Bednar’s introduction to the Yankees was, like that of every player the Yankees acquired at the 2025 deadline, a disaster: called on to bail out fellow acquisition Jake Bird, he allowed two runs on four hits (including one home run) to hand the lead to the Miami Marlins. Fortunately, his second inning of work in that game, in which he struck out two while retiring the side in order, would be much more emblematic of the rest of his 2025 — he allowed just four runs in 23 innings across the final two months of the season, as he brought stability to a closer role that had seen Devin Williams and Luke Weaver struggle. He remained his dominant self that October, allowing a grand total of three hits across six innings, earning the final out in each of the two Wild Card wins as the 2025 Yankees became the first team since the new playoff format was introduced to advance to the ALDS after dropping Game 1 of the Wild Card.

Bednar began 2026 by joining Team USA for this year’s World Baseball Classic, and while the United States squad embarrassed itself in pool play against Italy and ultimately lost in the championship to Venezuela, none of that was his fault: he provided four scoreless innings in middle relief as part of a stacked bullpen, allowing just six baserunners and striking out eight. Unfortunately, following the tournament, he got off to a shaky start to the season, culminating in a disastrous blown save against the Mets on May 17th in which he allowed three runs.

After that day, though, Bednar became lights-out, surrendering just 11 runs (eight earned) in his final 44 appearances of the season, with just two blown saves in that stretch. While his early slow struggles kept him from making his third career All-Star appearance, he ended the season tied for fifth in saves (35) and 14th among relievers in fWAR (1.9). Sure, he needed his emotional support baserunners far too often for my liking, but at the end of the day, few relievers were as reliable as he was in 2026.

At the end of this season, Bednar hits free agency, and at this point, it’s not clear whether the Yankees will look to retain their closer — after all, they haven’t really signed a reliever to a big long-term deal in half a decade, and on top of that, Bednar is on the wrong side of 30. (That’s a discussion for another day.) Whether he stays or goes, though, he was one of the bright spots in the Yankee bullpen over the last two seasons.

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.

This season, the Nationals had a lot of hitters emerge. However, you could make a strong argument that Andres Chaparro was the best of the bunch after the All-Star Break. After struggling to get things going as a part time player in the first half, Chappy burst on to the scene down the stretch.

In the first half, I wondered why Chaparro was even on the team. The 27 year old seemed like the ultimate Quad-A player who could dominate in AAA but couldn’t replicate that success against big league pitching. With a .586 OPS in the first half, and big league struggles in the past, it just seemed like Chappy was not that guy. 

Things changed in the second half though, and I think you can point to one swing as the turning point. The Nats were playing in Sacramento when Chaparro absolutely unloaded on a Jose Suarez fastball. He sent the pitch 467 feet, hitting the ball over everything.

That swing unlocked a new version of Chaparro. During that first road trip after the break, Chaparro hit 3 homers and gained a ton of confidence. Before that swing, Chaparro was just trying to show he belonged. However, that monster blast proved to him that he could compete and thrive at this level.

There were more big swings to come from the Nats hulking slugger. Chaparro hit .299 with a .998 OPS in the second half. He also crushed 12 homers, including two on the final day of the season. It was a shocking and awesome reversal of fortunes.

One of my favorite things about Chaparro is just how majestic his home runs are. When he gets a hold of one, you usually know it is gone. With his steeper bat path, his homers tend to hang in the air longer than most. The best example of that is his first homer on the last day of the season. I was at that game, and it felt like time stopped as we waited for that home run ball to reach the seats.

It is really tough not to be blown away by what Chaparro did in the second half. That generational run gave him great season totals. For the year, Chappy hit .263 with a .360 OBP, an .885 OPS and 13 homers in just 83 games. He only had 198 AB’s, though it felt like it was more than that. His impact in that smaller sample was very loud. Chaparro’s 141 wRC+ is an elite number. 

Heading into next season, I would like to see Chaparro get a shot at every day playing time, or at least something close to that. Despite his reputation as a lefty masher, Chaparro had very even splits. He had an .888 OPS against lefties and an .880 mark against righties. 

The Nats showed they are willing to turn platoon guys into everyday players if it is earned. We saw that with Curtis Mead, and I think Chaparro could be another example of that. He was facing more right handed pitching at the end of the year, and I hope that carries over. We actually wrote about how he could be more than a platoon guy during his monster run.

Right now, Chaparro’s primary competition for at bats against RHP is Abimelec Ortiz, who struggled mightily down the stretch. Even though Ortiz is left handed, I think Chaparro is the better option against righties. That could change as we get into the 2027 season, but right now, Chaparro is much more proven.

The biggest drawback for Chaparro is his poor defense. Ideally, Chaparro would be a DH who plays first base occasionally. This season, Chaparro mainly played at first base, where he did not look great. He also got a few games at third, where I do not think he can play.

However, if he hits like he did this season, you simply have to get his bat into the lineup. Chaparro demolished fastballs, does a great job pulling the ball in the air and takes his walks. He is not a contact hitter by any means, but a 23.2% K rate is totally manageable. 

With his big finish to the season, Andres Chaparro positioned himself nicely heading into next season. I think he deserves a shot at everyday playing time. It took him a while to establish himself, but like so many other Nats hitters, he took a major step forward this season.

Season Grade: A-